Midweek Meh-Ness [DOT 22/10/25]

Hope everyone is having a good week so far!


Because historically that always works out so well

CIA playing ‘most important part’ in US strikes in the Caribbean, sources say
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/21/us-strikes-caribbean-cia-role


Trump’s fake video featured ‘Danger Zone.’ Musician Kenny Loggins wants it scrubbed
https://www.npr.org/2025/10/20/nx-s1-5580328/kenny-loggins-donald-trump-ai-video


pssst, it’s a feature, not a bug

Trump’s nomination of Paul Ingrassia loses Republican support following racist text messages
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/21/trump-nomination-paul-ingrassia-racist-texts


You don’t say!

Pardoned Capitol rioter arrested for allegedly threatening to kill top Democrat
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2ej7ly369o


The hypocrisy is stunning

Fox News host Laura Ingraham joins business venture with Donald Trump Jr
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/oct/21/laura-ingraham-donald-trump-jr-business-fox-news


Have a great day!

avataravataravataravataravataravataravataravataravatar

16 Comments

    • more like Black TMZ, but it is still called The Root.

      • I was remembering the Old Root, and my commenting privileges, and was thinking they should get right back from where they started from:

        Notice how this differs from Soul Train.

  1. …ok…yes…the hypocrisy…

    Lankford was in the Senate when the Intelligence Committee wrote its giant report concluding that Russiagate was not a hoax, and it's criminal negligence by CNN to let him say this on air with no pushback.

    Gary Legum (@glegum.bsky.social) 2025-10-21T23:53:58.379Z

    …is the point & all

    Apparently some folks are playing real dumb about skull symbols so let’s play a little game I like to call “Nazi skull or not a Nazi skull”First up, the Jolly Roger. This is a pirate skull, not a Nazi skull. It means you might get robbed, but prolly not genocided.With me so far? 1/x

    Embrace the Void (@etvpod.bsky.social) 2025-10-22T05:23:19.591Z


    [ETA: other options covered that get various kinds of pass for being not-nazi-skulls: jolly roger (one-piece variant) cf. pirates but higher hijinks quotient; punisher skull TL;DR can be worn by nazis but essentially that’s technically an “asshole skull”; grateful dead – stoner skull; momento mori – philosopher skull; calavera – mexican party skull…& then finally the totenkopf thing – fully-nazi-skull…but…I did enjoy this observation about that one so I’ll wedge it in after-the-fact & try not to make a habit of it]

    Some people have pissed off nazis by calling it a “jazz hands skull”

    Steen Comer (oom bop oom bop bop) (@mediapathic.bsky.social) 2025-10-22T08:35:31.325Z


    especially about the nazi thing(s)

    Another Turning Point USA (TPUSA) chapter leader has been outed as a neo-nazi and member of violent white supremacist organizations Patriot Front and Active Club.

    NEW: CU Boulder sophomore Nathaniel Ellis has been identified as a member of the white supremacist groups Patriot Front and Active Club.Nathan is on the Executive Board for CU Boulder's Turning Point USA Chapter.Read the full report: frontrangeantifa.noblogs.org/nathan-ellis/

    Front Range Antifascists (@frontrangeantifa.bsky.social) 2025-10-22T00:57:24.689Z

    (whyisitpluralfuckthisbullshitalready)

    This is a "recommended" tweet pushed to a (very much not-Nazi) contact's iPhone lockscreen last week. Who knows how many millions it was pushed to by Musk's platform, including in this case, in the UK?It's now been deleted, but only after getting thousands of RTs.

    Josiah Mortimer (@josiah.writes.news) 2025-10-22T08:42:08.794Z

    …& everything

    Time to re-up one of the great quotes of all time…while the Totenkopf is in the discourse. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/attempted-homicide-richard-spencer-speech-gainesville-florida
    screenshot post from huffington post quoting

    …but

    Trump on asking taxpayers to compensate him: "They probably owe me a lot of money. But if I get money from uhhhhh our country I'll do something nice with it, like give it to charity or give it to the White House where we restore the White House."

    Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-10-21T21:04:20.455Z

    …I mean

    there is a new scandal as bad or worse than what got trump impeached the first time about every 48 hours

    like in the past two days he started illegally tearing down the white house to build a ballroom paid for from money extorted from american companies and demanded that the government secretly pay him a quarter of a billion dollars for investigating him for crimes he more or less admits to

    …at…some point?

    it's dizzying to me that stories like this — a corrupt grift built on democracy-wrecking lies that culminated in a coup attempt — barely breakthrough anymore. they're just daily background noise now.

    Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-10-21T21:28:56.160Z

    …you have…whatever this is

    I will give Palmer some credit, getting yourself in rooms constantly with people with large platforms who have no idea what you’re talking about so they don’t ask hard questions so you can sell your vaporware easy peasy is really smart business

    Secretary of Defense Rock (@sodrock.bsky.social) 2025-10-21T21:05:20.397Z

    …&…whatever this is

    this is kind of peak incel. by day, race war and fascism; when nom gets in trouble, mom calls the principal

    Josh Marshall (@joshtpm.bsky.social) 2025-10-21T21:10:19.620Z

    …& at the same time you have people who think jeffries is a terrorist & should be stochastically removed from the board to appropriately stack the game…you have…this?

    Having a case isn't the point here. This is an old tactic to neutralize enemies, Keep them busy defending themselves & they can't strike at you or continue living a normal life.Its also used by law enforcement against gangs & organized crime, keep dragging them in & take them out of play.

    (@murderedbybluesky.bsky.social) 2025-10-21T21:13:31.007Z

    …coupled to this

    At some point we just have to accept the right has already seceded from the rest of us right?

    Willow (@rockshrimp.bsky.social) 2025-10-21T21:47:32.687Z

    …while this

    “Trump added $3 billion over the last year [to his net worth], leveraging the presidency for profit.”Not a typo. Billion. With a “b.”

    Zach Everson (@zacheverson.com) 2025-10-21T21:22:01.181Z

    …is coupled to this

    I’ve written about people who were exonerated after being imprisoned for 20, 30, and 40-plus years. Some were nearly executed. None of them ever saw anything near $320 million. http://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/u...

    Radley Balko (@radleybalko.bsky.social) 2025-10-21T21:25:53.545Z

    …if the thunderbirds was how the UN worked we’d be calling international rescue & declaring all hands on deck, now…like…the white house is short a whole exterior wall when they made public statements to the effect that the original structure would remain intact & the gaudy new carbuncle would be an adjoining extension & then they tore into surely a contender for the most historically significant structure in the…rather extensive…nation…for a grift to sop the vanity of an overtly corrupt mentally unwell festering mass of bigoted mis-firing neural pathways whose constant demonstration that he lacks the capacity for joining his thinking up for more that 3 seconds at a time if he can’t see a way to have it help him put his hand in someone’s pocket or keep his ass out of the consequences pit is somehow overlooked like it operates within some sort of reason-defiant forcefield…there’s literally actual not-even-all-that-debated-about-in-that-sense-previously plainly (relatively speaking) worded constitutional amendment type stuff specifically about all the ways it’s not just appropriate but somewhere between expected & demanded that you literally do the intervention thing under circumstances we passed the first time around…so expecting the second time to operate in any sense that makes sense is perhaps conceptually a fool’s errand…but…even so…this is like uncle sam is getting mugged…in a repetitive lunch-money kinda way…by *these assholes*

    …but…to wilfully make light of something we ought to take seriously…they got capone for the tax stuff…not the multiple homicides with multiple witnesses stuff…so…kenny loggins is a long way from being the first…could a bunch of wildly successful artists pursue a class action pre-emptive opt-out pre-denial-of-use legal case to bankrupt the business model rather than the technology of the AI thing & also to pursue all that astroturf pac-funded bullshit that puts these things in those playlists the way patent trolls pursue shit…or fuck it…go full drake on that shit if you have to…if kendrick joins the suit you could birth a whole new cottage industry of youtube channels talking about that shit alone…generally show them what the highway to that dangerzone looks like until one of the parts of the equilibrium we get back is going back to them being on the back foot by default?

    • In my younger days I leaned right (Canadian right) but I never had anything resembling SS on my body.

      FYI, Canadians showed no quarter/mercy and rarely took SS prisoners after the SS murdered Canadian prisoners in Normandy in WW2.

      BTW, nice cheekbones and glasses Nazi boy, Nathanial (funny, I used that name for a scummy WH National Security Advisor who was trying to sabotage US Chinese relations for personal gain in my first manuscript.)

      • …been seeing variations on this here & there for days at this point…there’s a variety of slippery slopes that onboard a certain direct-ably self-selecting subset of disaffected (predominantly-in-ways-presented-as-a-feature-so-maybe-pro-dominantly-in-a-few-ways male) youth to slide down by eliding *legitimate grievance they can’t articulate or substantively alter* into a race-baiting engine of incipient frustration-injected hate-fuelled unthinkingly violent kneejerk reactionary antagonism that long jumped the shark of the pre-retaliatory tactical playbook into a somewhat predictable & sustainable political utility…provided you arrest their development while they still think the point is to win at lord of the flies & that’s mostly less about surviving in any sustainable fashion than it is about who has the fucking conch…& that is currently wedged irretrievably up the fundament of the only presidential ass of such prodigious proportions as to be able to use it like an actual cornucopia of liquid faecal matter…&…sorry if this part hasn’t already occurred to you & all…but…I grew up with a lot of “could the hulk take superman” kids that became the sort of “but when he rescued her wouldn’t their relative velocities have made that ‘when his indestructible limbs cleaved through her & rendered the whole issue moot in gruesome illustration of why sometimes you might have unusual incentives to avoid journalistically unethical romantic entanglements with extraterrestrial endlings’ that grew up to be the first run audience for the source material they believe it or not toned down considerably for “the boys”…&…that rage-bait faecal-slop clip has that ass wedged in a cockpit you’d need to write the plane off to cut him out of after you somehow greased him in there cankles first…but…it’s a fighter jet…it’s not a go slow kind of deal…& dumping viscous material at that speed out of US aircraft may or may not have other points of potential comparison…but…when it comes to how it lands on the people below its lateral velocity is like someone on a 6ft ladder threw a bucket of kids’-game-show slime/goo/goop/whatever-isn’t-trademarked-I-guess…in which case…in a world of snapchat filters & camera-effects…he posted a “if I was king I’d just napalm these people but I supposedly can’t do that, I mean I could, you couldn’t make me not do, I’m choosing not to do that because I’m the bigger person – the bigliest person, if you wanna know – but you know what if you all get to go out & talk all this shit about me I get to have a video where they let me napalm you but instead of the napalm I get to spew all “your” shit back at you & *you* look like the prize asshole in a buster keaton routine…& you still have to call me mr president while I shit all over everything because I’m daddy’s special boy & also your religion’s promised second coming of a messiah who was definitely not one of the bad jews the first time & my supreme lawyers say that’s the law no taksies backsies” video…on an official channel of the formal representatives of the executive office of the executive branch of a constitutional republic…like the kind of intern who needs a duvet day because they mislaid their executive function today…& this remains the gold standard of “but you can’t deny it’s the most effective anyone’s been with” means of policing political delineation & other variables that make up the properties of the overton window & how its sectors exhibit lensing effects so extreme it seems implausible they inhabit the same underlying physical dimension…& not the almost-comically-implausible perfect storm of cascading absurdities that deal with getting all the plot-furniture in place in the first act of a low-rent hollywood action thriller that probably went straight to streaming after even being more post- than -production couldn’t save it from starring steven segal for underwriting purposes & obligations to eastern bloc financing…in which the villains are *so* cinematic-ly shit-eatingly craven that it’s not even implausible that today-segal could comfortably take them in the third act finally when he saves…I dunno…GPT’s pro-forma USP for the pitch…so…the cybernetic bald eagle that is the singularity…as-evolved-by-bootstrapping-an-AI-using-only-the-federalist-papers-the-constitution-the-king-james-bible-&-the-bill-of-rights…plus…ah…the US tax code…&…ummm…the system prompt library of grok…& over-clocking the training cycles to speedrun the fermentation into the living embodiment of the technofascist apocalypse born arising from the ashes of the barren wasteland still burning with the inner light of righteous fury…or…possibly because the microplastics in whatever circulatory/nervous system wiring harness deal its cybernetic corporeality is macguffin-ed out of reacts to the poisoned thing that used to be a breathable atmosphere the way phosphorous does to oxygen…or lithium in water…or whatever…none of that matters what matter is it’s america & nothing could be more america & that means america wins & everything’s top trumps & even his name is on that so it’s his like the buildings that say that…that…also aren’t his for the most part but somehow still have to pay him to have him tarnish their potentially innocent establishment facades for them that way…& *that* is *the only thing* this movie is about…plus he kills more people than rambo & that james bond fag-smoker* put together so obviously that’s a happy ending no matter who you are or how you identify…it’s box office dynamite so that’s just basic math

        [* …pick your spot right…& this is a fully 100% permissible thing to say that’s not likely to be considered a slur so much as an observation of an implied character trait omitted from the screen record…if you’re slightly off-beam…that’d be for “woke” “political correctness gone mad” reasons of a sinister nanny state variety & not…say…a migratory shift of cultural signifiers that no longer had “remaining addicted to a thing that can contribute to pretty much *the* undesirable outcome” listed under “characteristics considered to be load-bearing in a desirable appearance” due to a process more akin to brownian motion than covert operators…but…even then you won’t actually get to the bit of their comfort zone where they start casually dropping slurs or turning out to have white-supremacist tattoos old enough to vote for at least a bit longer than that…other spots…that you don’t need a passport to get to from the one sort…you could go home wearing less teeth than you left with…language do be that way sometimes…generally not about things the nazis considered personal IP for branding purposes to the point that wearing the patch if you aren’t in the gang might be considered a terminal error applied well within the lifetime of your own parents in ways that definitely impacted directly on theirs…even among man’s-man conventions at peak boys-will-be-boys levels of behaving in ways that should probably abort their career prospects rather than blow up other people’s lives…& there’s some dumb fucking kids in that group…& even they would not act like it’s so normal it’s weird you’re raising your eyebrow that a guy campaigning on a progressive ticket for the US senate sported a waffen-SS logo for a decade or two & then not only didn’t get it removed after leaving quotes on the record to indicate that part stopped being news to him at some point…&…hell…he probably could have wrung a sequence of tik tok videos out of the laser treatments or the cover-up tattoo getting rid of it where he talked up all his road to damascus credentials & too the wind out of the blackwater thing & said “OK maybe this time it won’t be me but watch me help it be someone better than susan & keep me in mind if they look like they need tagging out down the line” & kept the lion’s share of his supporters, potentially…stranger stuff won’t fucking stop happening no matter how much we beg, after all…but…with or without that one candidate…in roused rabble terms…by the numbers?

        So No Kings 2 protests were:
        75x as big as initial Tea Party rally in Philly
        About 200x in DC
        200x in Boston
        20x in Austin
        7x in Houston

        Here's a gift link to the New York Times' coverage of the initial Tea Party rallies in April 2009 which inspired the media to treat it like a massive movement.Check out how tiny the crowds were:Philly: 200DC: "several hundred"Boston: 500Austin: 1,000Houston: 2,000

        Kevin M. Kruse (@kevinmkruse.bsky.social) 2025-10-20T12:55:23.695Z

        Sources:
        https://whyy.org/articles/philadelphia-no-kings-anti-trump-rally-october/
        https://www.wsj.com/us-news/no-kings-protests
        https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/no-kings-rally-boston-security/

        https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/article/no-kings-protest-october-21098533.php

        …can you really have a mandate if you probably think that means whatever he was thinking of at times like these?

        So, per reporting from Zeteo’s Asawin Suebsaeng, in today’s new ‘First Draft’ newsletter, Trump tried to get a newly-divorced Russ Vought, Project 2025 architect & now budget chief, laid at Mar-a-Lago. The details are, ahem, as crude as you’d expect from Trump. zeteo.com/p/trump-shit…

        Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan.bsky.social) 2025-10-20T18:03:41.378Z

        …when disaster capitalism is no longer a euphemism but a recognized business sector

        🚨EXCLUSIVE🚨Many things are changing before our eyes. Others are harder to seeLike the US economyAmericans are spending more 💲 recovering from disasters and preparing for the next one. 36% of US GDP growth since 2000 is related to climate disasters.Welcome to the Disaster Industrial Complex 🎁🔗

        Eric Roston (@eroston.bsky.social) 2025-10-21T21:42:31.936Z

        …& the passive voice is some kind of perverse lifestyle brand

        I must be tired, this one took me a hot minute. But the subtlety is *chefs kiss*

        STEMthebleeding (@stemthebleeding.bsky.social) 2025-10-21T21:38:48.573Z

        …& anything shy of actively seeking to avoid being informed leaves you open to the blunt instruments of cognitive shock…like…

        I blinked several times reading this post. Then I read the article and blinked a million times more. Why is this allowed again? (This is a rhetorical question.)

        Silicon Valley startup admits its balloon may have struck United jet, forcing emergency landing http://www.sfchronicle.com/travel/artic...

        Anthony Edwards (@edwardsanthonyb.bsky.social) 2025-10-21T16:40:59.879Z

        …I dunno…pray for us sinners, I guess?

        Important subtext: Hard to oversell how rare this precise Christian coalition is, and how unusually defiant this letter they’re signing is.

        NEW: 200+ Chicago-area clergy — Protestants, Catholics, and evangelicals — have signed a letter decrying ICE’s efforts and voicing a willingness to put their “bodies on the line” for migrants.

        “What Kristi Noem and her ICE agents are doing is immoral,” they write. https://religionnews.com/2025/10/21/after-clergy-arrests-religious-pushback-to-ice-expands-in-chicago/
        screenshot quote about methodist minister involved in protest being beaten and restrained while in the act of praying

          • …damn…am actually sorry about that part, for whatever that’s worth

            …sorta hoped the “they’re losing the church” thing might be a bit of a tonic but I can see how that might be thin gruel…sorry

    • I never wanted my mom to help me with problems since I was… 9 ish?

      Never understood the concept of helicopter parents past 13. I would be humiliated and disgusted with myself if mommy had to save my career at the age of 25/30?

      Doesn’t exactly gain respect among the ranks, but I suspect little Paulie Tugnuts doesn’t realize that.

  2. Who among us has not been beaten up by seven “ladyboys” in Thailand? Sorry, it’s the Post. The NYT is also covering this but their paywall is impenetrable.

    https://nypost.com/2025/10/21/us-news/luigi-mangione-got-beaten-up-by-7-ladyboys-in-thailand-months-before-unitedhealthcare-ceo-shooting-report/

    I will say that when I was 26 I was concentrating on jumping around on various jobs (I didn’t last more than 6 months at any of them before I flew off in search of the next job that paid $2,000 a year more. God bless the late-80s labor shortage and the low rents brought on by the perception that even Manhattan was a deadly hellscape. Two-bedroom rent-stabilized apartment in Chelsea for less than $1,000 a month?)

    Anyway, I certainly wasn’t backpacking around Asia on a lark and getting on the wrong side of some ladyboy gang.

  3. …you remember when they made them march for his birthday & people learned what malicious compliance can look like?

    …so…anyway

    this RULES

    Marisa Kabas (@marisakabas.bsky.social) 2025-10-21T19:45:45.281Z

    […in fairness my first thought was along the lines of the compliance involving a de facto alliance of the one being told their piece required the quote & the one they asked to provide it…so…I’m not taking against the byline over it but it’s still out of context for me at the moment]

  4. welp as i cant quite figure out how to get my phone to make pics deadsplinter sized…and oppo wont let me crosspost pics…here https://opposite-lock.com/topic/129828/the-f1-box-got-a-slight-performance-upgrade
    my goody box arrived and is now running…or well..running as well as can be expected in the middle of initial setup hows all this work then anyways hell

    • …so…you can time travel now, right?

      • once i figure out which setting i need to play with…..probably?

        assuming i dont forget what i was doing coz i got distracted playing with all the disco light settings…

Leave a Reply